Chef R.J. Tsarov’s Thai Moules et Frites at the Delachaise

So glad these are still on the menu, even after you left! How did you come up with the recipe?

“About 4-5 years ago, I wanted to do a Thai mussel special, but I didn’t want to use coconut milk. I’d made mussels before with wine, butter, garlic, tomato and basil, so I started by adding Thai aromatics to that—fish sauce and lime juice. It became a joke in the kitchen; my sous chef thought it was ridiculous. “Fish sauce and butter don’t mix!” And I’d still hear that whenever an order for mussels came in, which was a lot.

When you experiment, you sometimes hit on something, and sometimes it’s a mess. Fusion cuisine can sometimes be confusion cuisine. I figured out that there’s only one fish sauce that will work for this dish, the Three Crabs brand. I get it at Hong Kong Market. When they were out, I tried another, and it was a disaster. And I use a very special Pinot Grigio—I went through probably six different types of wine.